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The (pre)history of the area that would later be known as Sumer begins in the seventh millennium BC with the oldest-known traces of human occupation at Tell el-'Oueili.

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Available sources
Until the emergence of Proto-Cuneiform in the fourth millennium BC, the reconstruction of social and political developments in Mesopotamia is entirely based on other forms of evidence such as glyptics and settlement patterns as reconstructed from archaeological excavations and surveys.

The Sumerian King List is among the best-known sources that have been used in the past to reconstruct the (political) history of Sumer.

Geography
Sumer was written as ki-en-gi in Sumerian and šumeru in Akkadian (from which its modern name derives). The available sources do not always allow to clearly outline which geographical region(s) were meant by these terms. During the Ur III period, the whole of Babylonia (southern Mesopotamia) was often described as the land of Sumer and Akkad (as in the Sumerian royal title lugal ki-en-gi ki-uri, or "king of Sumer and Akkad). The border between Sumer in the south and Akkad in the north was at the city of Nippur. Akkadian sources indicate that, among others, the cities of Umma, Lagash, and Adab were part of Sumer. These cities were also mentioned in relation with Sumer in Early Dynastic inscriptions.

The "Sumerian question"
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Ubaid period
Tell el-'Oueili is the oldest known human settlement in Sumer. Its earliest occupation layers are dated to Ubaid 0 (6500-5400 BC). It has long been thought that southern Mesopotamia was inhospitable before this time. However, modern research indicates that the area's climate may have been more benign from the eleventh millennium BC, so that older traces of human occupation can be expected.

Occupation layers dating to the Ubaid period have been excavated at a number of sites, including Uruk, Eridu, Ur, and of course the type site of Tell al-'Ubaid itself.